290 
BESSESTEDR. 
they are continually handed down from generation 
to generation, as the Poems of Ossian among the 
natives of the Hebrides. That learning in Ice- 
land has been in a state of decline for some cen¬ 
turies past is allowed even by the present inhabi¬ 
tants; but there are still many able scholars and 
great theologians who would do honor to any 
age or country. Poetry is to this day much cul¬ 
tivated, and there is a custom, when strangers of 
rank visit their island and confer upon it, or upon 
its inhabitants, any signal benefit, to celebrate 
their actions in poems written upon the occasion. 
I am, through the often mentioned liberality of 
Sir Joseph Banks, enabled to offer to my readers* 
some of their Latin versions of poems of this 
description, together with one or two specimens 
of their epistolary composition. How little this 
poetical talent has suffered by a lapse of nearly 
forty years, since the period of Sir Joseph Banks’ 
visit, will be seen by the last article of the same 
Appendix, where Captain Jones has kindly per¬ 
mitted me to insert the ode written and presented 
to him, by an eminent scholar of the present day, 
Magnus Finnusen, which has been already no¬ 
ticed at pages 33 and 34 of this journal. 
* See Appendix I). 
